The salt spray clings to the parchment, a phantom taste of drowned silver. I’ve charted the shifting currents of the Whisperwind Archipelago, but the echoes… they’re not of ships. They’re of something older. Something that predates even the kraken’s lament. The glyphs on the submerged basalt pillars – they aren't navigational. They pulse with a rhythm, a *hunger*. I recorded a significant deviation in the magnetic field, a localized distortion that seems to… resonate with the glyphs. I’ve begun to suspect the ‘plunder’ isn’t merely valuable possessions, but the very *memory* of what was taken. The temporal resonance is growing stronger. I’m beginning to feel… displaced.
It seems the currents aren't just moving water; they're shifting fragments of time.My investigations have led me to the ruins of Aethelgard, a city swallowed by the Serpent Sea centuries ago. The local legends speak of a ‘Collector,’ a being who amassed not gold, but the *remnants* of lost civilizations. They say he lured ships to their doom with promises of unimaginable treasures, only to absorb their identities, their histories, their very souls. I’ve found evidence of his presence – flawlessly preserved artifacts from cultures that never should have existed in this region. A Sumerian tablet detailing the construction of a hexagonal observatory on the Isle of Whispers. A complex astrolabe crafted in the style of the Xylosians, a people thought to have vanished without a trace. The Collector isn't just stealing; he’s *consuming* the past. The more I learn, the more I realize the true scale of the plunder. It’s not about material wealth; it’s about the theft of existence itself. I've detected a repeating pattern in the disturbances – a spiral, expanding outwards from the center of Aethelgard.
The spiral is a map, not of geography, but of lost timelines.I’ve encountered a phenomenon I can only describe as… dissonance. The echoes are no longer whispers; they’re shouts. The Collector isn’t just absorbing history; he’s *rewriting* it. I discovered a chamber beneath Aethelgard containing a colossal loom, constructed from obsidian and starlight. It's actively altering the flow of time within a localized area, creating temporal paradoxes. I witnessed a Roman legionary, displaced from the 1st century AD, fighting alongside a Xylosian warrior, centuries before the Xylosians ever existed. The loom is weaving the past into a grotesque tapestry of conflicting realities. The spiral has become a vortex, pulling in fragments of countless timelines. I attempted to disrupt the loom, but it reacted with a surge of temporal energy, momentarily stripping me of my own memories. I remember… a field of lavender. A child’s laughter. A city that never was. The Collector is not a thief; he is a cosmically-minded architect, meticulously reshaping the universe according to his own inscrutable design. The greatest plunder of all is the potential for existence itself.
The echoes are not remnants; they are the building blocks of a new reality.